Professional Athletes And Social Protesting, Biting The Hands That Feed Them

Open Letter To The NFL PLAYERS. The Boycott is coming.
You graduated high school in 2011. Your teenage years were a struggle. You grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Your mother was the leader of the family and worked tirelessly to keep a roof over your head and food on your plate.

Academics were a struggle for you and your grades were mediocre at best. The only thing that made you stand out is you weighed 225 lbs and could run 40 yards in 4.2 seconds while carrying a football. Your best friend was just like you, except he didn’t play football. Instead of going to football practice after school, he went to work at McDonald’s for minimum wage.
                                    You were recruited by all the big colleges and spent every weekend of your senior year making visits to universities where coaches and boosters tried to convince you their school was best. They laid out the red carpet for you. Your best friend worked double shifts at Mickey D’s. College was not an option for him. On the day you signed with Big State University, your best friend signed paperwork with his Army recruiter. You went to summer workouts. He went to basic training.

You spent the next four years living in the athletic dorm, eating at the training table. You spent your Saturdays on the football field, cheered on by adoring fans.

Tutors attended to your every academic need. You attended class when you felt like it. Sure, you worked hard. You lifted weights, ran sprints, studied plays, and soon became one of the top football players in the country. Your best friend was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. While you were in college, he deployed to Iraq once and Afghanistan twice. He became a Sergeant and led a squad of 19-year-old soldiers who grew up just like he did. He shed his blood in Afghanistan and watched young American's give their lives, limbs, and innocence for the US.

You went to the NFL combine and scored off the charts. You hired an agent and waited for draft day. You were drafted in the first round and your agent immediately went to work, ensuring that you received the most money possible. You signed for $16 million although you had never played a single down of professional football. Your best friend re-enlisted in the Army for four more years. As a combat tested sergeant, he will be paid $32,000 per year.

You will drive a Ferrari on the streets of South Beach. He will ride in the back of a Blackhawk helicopter with 10 other combat loaded soldiers. You will sleep at the Ritz. He will dig a hole in the ground and try to sleep. You will “make it rain” in the club. He will pray for rain as the temperature reaches 120 degrees.

On Sunday, you will run into a stadium as tens of thousands of fans cheer and yell your name. For your best friend, there is little difference between Sunday or any other day of the week. There are no adoring fans. There are only people trying to kill him and his soldiers. Every now and then, he and his soldiers leave the front lines and “go to the rear” to rest.

When the National Anthem plays and you take a knee, he will jump to his feet and salute the television. While you protest the unfairness of life in the United States, he will give thanks to God that he has the honor of defending his great country.

To the players of the NFL: We are the people who buy your tickets, watch you on TV, and wear your jerseys. We anxiously wait for Sundays so we can cheer for you and marvel at your athleticism. Although we love to watch you play, we care little about your opinions until you offend us. You have the absolute right to express yourselves, but we have the absolute right to boycott you. We have tolerated your drug use and DUIs, your domestic violence, and your vulgar displays of wealth. We should be ashamed for putting our admiration of your physical skills before what is morally right. But now you have gone too far. You have insulted our flag, our country, our soldiers, our police officers, and our veterans. You are living the American dream, yet you disparage our great country. I encourage all like-minded Americans to boycott the NFL.
 National boycott of the NFL is November 8th & 15th in honor of Veteran’s Day, November 11. Boycott all football telecast, all fans, all ticket holders, stay away from attending any games, let them play to empty stadiums. Pass this post along to all your friends and family. Honor our military - some of whom come home with the American flag draped over their coffin.
Add MLB, NBA, and any other sport that kneels to this

#BoycottNFL #BoycottTheNFL #NFLBoycott
#BoycottNBA #BoycottTheNBA #NBABoycott
#BoycottMLB #MLBBoycott
#USA #Veterans #backtheblue #StandForTheFlag

Kamala Harris Not Eligible To Become President, Is She Eligible To Be Vice President?

The $64 Thousand Question begins with this,

The 14th Amendment has two requirements to become a citizen of the U.S..
1) born in the U.S. and
2) subject to the jurisdiction thereof.
The Supreme Court has yet to address the significance of #2.  Those most interested in the subject have gone back to the intent of the drafters, as expressed before Congress, to determine that the drafters expressly stated that "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" excluded the birth of babies of foreign nationals such as diplomatic representatives of foreign countries and persons of foreign nations here legally or illegally.
https://cgalightbearer.blogspot.com/2020/08/kamala-harris-is-not-eligible-for.html
The discussions centered around the term "inhabitants" and the concept of inhabitants owing their allegiance to the U.S.  To understand the importance of this term one must remember the backdrop of events surrounding the 14th Amendment. 
(The Year 1868) This was just after the end of the Civil War.  Most of the Southern states had yet to be admitted back into the Union.  Take Texas, for example and states to come within the territory of the U.S. such as AZ and NM.  These "inhabitants" owed their allegiance to the U.S. and were not yet part of the Union.  Because of the allegiance to the U.S. they became citizens having been born and subject to the jurisdiction thereof of the U.S.  Noteworthy, because of either systemic bias against American Indians or simply because American Indians owned their allegiance to their independent tribe or nation, they were not considered citizens of the U.S. at that time.

So, with the above in mind, people here legally or illegally, from a foreign nation, with a passport and allegiance to that nation, do not fit within the definition of "inhabitants" as that term was used by the framers of the 14th.Amendment.  Their children would have the same allegiance the parents.  For example, John McCain was born in a foreign country to U.S. citizen parents.  He was deemed to have the same allegiance as that of his parents.  I do not recall the circumstances of having a birth certificate of say Spain to U.S. citizens who happen to be there for one reason or another but in that gray area of memory I recall that McCain, when he reached the age of maturity, had to apply for and go through the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag  to obtain a U.S. passport and vote.

So, with the above in mind, after receiving the an email from an astute City Attorney friend of mine and being somewhat intrigued by the questions it raises, I decided to do a Google search to see what I could find.
Do you recall Google, Facebook and the lot being placed on the carpet by Senate hearings regarding their control over what comes up on your research screen when you do a search?  When I plugged in my research criteria I was shocked to see how many articles from all of the alphabet media, newspapers and liberal organizations there were saying, in the headline of the article, "fake", so one reading the result of the research would immediately feel the above email was fake.  I had to go to page 9 to find my first article discussing the subject and revealing questions I have.

What I found is that Kamala's parents were not U.S. citizens.  Her mother was scheduled to go to India for an arranged marriage but, instead, she married Harris.  Both were students at the UniversityCalifornia.  They appear to have been here legally.  Then, the stories split on circumstance.  One, Peggy Noonan of t  he Waall Street Journal, related a wonderful experience of Kamila growing up with the classic American experience.  Others address the fact that Kamila's mother divorced and she and Kamala moved to Canada- suggesting no allegiance to the U.S.- where Kamala was raised without the American experience (OK, Canada is pretty close).

        (Above, Former Senator and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and Kamala Harris.)

The story goes that Kamala then returned to the U.S. for her college education, thereafter she met California Senator Willie Brown, 15 years  the Speaker of the Assembly, and we know what happened thereafter. She worked for his Law Firm, became his Mistress, and he appointed he r to several influencial Boards of Directors on a salary of $73,000/year each. Eventually with his recommendations she eventually became the Attorney General of California.

Questions I have, beyond the fact that Kamala's parents were not U.S. citizens, include what citizenship did she declare when she was in Canada ( if this is accurate), and how and when did she become a U.S. citizen.  As they say, "prove it"

So, these questions that should not be swept under the rug as they were with Barack Hussein Obama.  Qualification for president is a serious Issue.  If one party, with the ability and money to hide the past or fake the past of a candidate can look to how it worked once will continue to ignore the Constitution and try fix the history of their candidates.  This conduct makes the Constitution meaningless.
Where there are questions, the public should have the freedom to raise the question and the person running for President or Vice President of the United States should automatically have the obligation to prove their citizenship.

 

San Francisco Named Part Of Street For First Black Fireman

Street named after San Francisco’s first Black Fireman 

He was a convert who tried to see the best in people.

Earl Gage Jr. in San Francisco Independent newspaper (Photo courtesy of Blondell Chism via Catholic San Francisco)

 

 

The board of supervisors voted unanimously June 14, 2020 to name a portion of Willow Street between Buchanan and Laguna after Earl Gage Jr.  The street runs through the Western Addition neighborhood of the city where the Gage family — longtime St. Emydius parishioners — lived.“He was a man who kept his strong faith,” said his daughter Blondell Chism on July 24.  “No matter what happened, all was good and he was blessed.”Gage was already a Christian but converted to Catholicism to marry his wife.While the department of public works readies the new street sign for an as-yet-unscheduled installation date, San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston has commissioned a mural of Gage to accompany it. 

 Gage was hired by the San Francisco Fire Department in 1955 at age 28 and was the sole Black firefighter for the next 12 years. He retired in 1983 and died in 2017 at age 90.His hire was a progressive move for the times and not embraced by all members of the department, said Sherman Tillman, president of the Black Firefighters Association.

 

 

 

There were the fellow firefighters who refused to sleep on any mattress Gage had occupied in the communal firehouse, he said. His mattress was urinated on so repeatedly that the young firefighter took to carrying his own with him from station to station.
“When you think about the discrimination he saw toward himself you’d think a person would be disillusioned and hateful toward the people who did those things,” said Tillman, a longtime parishioner of Star of the Sea Parish on Geary Blvd. “He wasn’t.”
Threats to his safety eventually led Gage away from field work and to a role as the SFFD’s director of community services. There he helped create a new training course for the firefighter’s exam after seeing it was a hurdle for many aspiring firefighters. He was also part of a federal court consent degree that pushed for diversity in the predominantly white, male department.
Tillman called Gage a “man of God who tried to see the best in people despite their flaws….”
The above comes from a July 30 story from Catholic San Francisco via Catholic News Agency.

PARLER, or Twitter, or Facebook, or GAB? You be the Judge.

The Right’s New Favorite Social Media Platform Parler Is Just as Restrictive as Twitter

The platform bans ‘fisticuffs’ but allows ‘buttock’

Sarah Emerson

Jun 26 , 2020

Conservative internet personalities are migrating to Parler, a social media app created in 2018 that bills itself as a “non-biased free speech” platform. The wave of support follows Twitter’s recent decision to permanently suspend Logan Cook, a pro-Trump meme creator who goes by the moniker “CarpeDonktum” and was removed from the platform on Tuesday over repeated copyright violations.

But while Parler claims to promote “free expression,” a closer look at its guidelines reveals a set of rules that in many ways is just as restrictive, or even more so, than Twitter’s own terms of service.

Parler (pronounced “par-lay,” as in the French word meaning “to speak”) was founded by John Matze, a libertarian software developer in Nevada who briefly worked at Amazon, according to LinkedIn. It is functionally similar to Twitter, allowing people to follow other users and access a news feed akin to Twitter Moments but overwhelmingly populated by conservative pundits, politicians, and outlets like Zero Hedge and Epoch Times. Posts can be upvoted or downvoted and “echoed” rather than retweeted. Parler also features a built-in meme maker containing filters such as a “Breaking News” chyron. Matze claims the platform has roughly 1 million users, up from an estimated 100,000 last year.

Parler’s surges in popularity over the past two years have been mostly linked to the moderation of conservative figures on Twitter. Several months after its launch in August, Parler experienced a bump in users after far-right activist Laura Loomer and pro-Trump commentator Candace Owens were respectively banned and suspended by Twitter. Both Owens and Loomer joined Parler in 2018, along with other figures such as YouTube host Paul Joseph Watson, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. Matze has appeared on Fox News describing Parler as a haven for people who felt censored online. He added that only content containing “some sort of constitutional violation” would be moderated by the platform.

But a review of Parler’s community guidelines shows the platform has more in common with Twitter than its marketing implies.

Parler’s rules were updated sometime between 2019 and this year. As of July 2019, Parler’s community guidelines protected “offensive speech,” “hate speech ([that] is not considered obscene by the FCC),” and “fake news,” according to a previous version of its rules accessible on the Internet Archive. A vague chart comparing protected and prohibited content allows “dark humor” but discourages “fighting words.” Satire is permitted but not impersonation.

“We want to uphold the rights of free speech according to the U.S. Constitution; however, we also do not want user content to be so obscene that it undermines the core purpose of Parler as a platform for meaningful discussion,” these guidelines state. Parler cites the Federal Communications Commission’s definition of “obscenity,” which regulates on-air programming and has been invoked in recent complaints about mild nudity and profanity, drawing criticism from some First Amendment experts over the scope of its use.

Unlike Gab, another conservative platform that has attracted white supremacists in the wake of events like Charlottesville, Parler has kept a fairly low profile.

Parler’s current community guidelines are more specific and less permissive, and it’s unclear why the company’s rules were changed. Whereas it once allowed “fake news,” it now advises users to “not purposefully share rumors about other users/people you know are false.” Parler previously discouraged fighting words; it now clarifies that rule as “a personal assault with the intention of inviting the other party to fisticuffs.” (Fisticuffs being a somewhat outdated word for fistfight.) The platform prohibits nudity, including female nipples, specifically, and any form of genitalia. Parler does note, however, that “buttock is acceptable.”

For comparison, Twitter forbids images of female breasts, with the exception of breastfeeding. Twitter allows parody or satire accounts but similarly draws the line at impersonation. Much like Twitter’s policy that resulted in the labeling of President Trump’s tweet last month — “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” Trump wrote of protests in Minneapolis — Parler also discourages content that incites violence or produces a clear and present danger.

So far, none of these rules have been tested to the extent of Twitter’s guidelines. And unlike Gab, another conservative platform that has attracted white supremacists in the wake of events like Charlottesville, Parler has kept a fairly low profile. (All of this could change, however, if Parler manages to court President Trump, for whom Matze has preemptively reserved a handle.) But despite its free speech veneer and anti-moderation promises, Parler is, at present, merely a haven for Twitter social media castoffs.

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Parler did not immediately respond to OneZero’s questions about its community guidelines.

Parler’s Founder Explains Why He Built Trump’s New Favorite Social Media App

Abram BrownForbes Staff

Business

WASHINGTON, DC - MAY 31: U.S. President Donald Trump shouts answers to reporters after Vietnamese ... [+]

Getty Images

“I hope you don’t mind that I’m eating: I haven’t eaten all day,” says Parler founder John Matze, devouring a late lunch. His social media app—a new favorite of President Trump’s and other GOP leaders—has been under siege for the past few hours. “I’m sitting here like, banning trolls.”
By trolls he means teenage leftists who’ve flooded onto Parler after the Trump campaign publicly declared on Wednesday that it might decamp from Facebook and Twitter and refocus its efforts through Parler. Matze knows the leftists’ ages of the trolls, as he calls them, because some verified their accounts, coughing up selfies and driver’s licenses or passports (a set of highly unusual requirements for proving identity and registering for an online account). They’re comment-raiding Parler posts—swamping them with messages that make it unpleasant for the app’s conservative users to post and interact with each other. “They’re trying to get people to have a bad experience and leave,” he says. “We've got a big army of volunteers to help take care of this. It's going to be handled within 48 hours.”
Parler—as in, a parlor room where a chat might happen—is a two-year-old app dedicated, Matze says, to the promulgation of free speech: “The best thing is for everyone to engage with a bad idea and shut it down through public discourse.” Right now, Parler is hosting a very one-sided conversation. It is almost entirely made up of Republican leaders, officials, thinkers and publications. (Liberals account for a “very minute share of the population,” Matze says.) The Trump campaign, of course, is on Parler. Likewise, Trump’s son Eric, his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, and his campaign manager, Brad Parscale. Alongside them: senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz, the National Rife Association and The Washington Times. Listening to what they say are 1.7 million users, almost double the amount of people on the app in April.

Presumably many have arrived in the days following Trump’s announcement. This moment in the sun for Parler comes courtesy of the president’s on-going feud with Facebook and, especially, Twitter over what he and other conservatives see as censorship and unfair treatment. That tension has grown recently after Twitter applied fact check and explanatory labels on several of Trump’s tweets; Facebook now appears poised to do something similar. Trump has already threatened the social media industry with increased regulation. And he may go a step further than that and move his own digital presence—a key factor in his 2016 victory—over to an app like Parler. It has been a home for the right since its beginning, and it’s an ideal spot for the president’s fiery words given Matze’s devoutly laissez faire attitude toward speech.

"I've been talking about free speech for a while before it was cool," says John Matze, 27, the ... [+]

The Epoch Times

“There are going to be no fact checkers. You're not going to be told what to think and what to say. A police officer isn't going to arrest you if you say the wrong opinion,” says Matze, 27. “I think that's all people want. That's what they like.”
Matze has been weighing these thoughts for some time, stretching back to his time as a University of Denver undergrad, where he studied math, German and business. He found himself leaning a lot toward the conservative economist Thomas Sowell (“very logical”), and he also digs the classic libertarian lodestar Ayn Rand (“very interesting”). Matze describes himself as an arguer. “I don't have too many friends, but the ones I do have, we just talk amongst ourselves about ideas—crazy ones, easy ones, whatever.”
After graduating in 2014, he took shorts gigs as a software developer at number of companies, including a few months at Amazon AMZN . Matze was never into “big central points of authority,” and this included bosses. So he struck out on his own in 2018, raising some angel round money from friends to begin Parler (he won’t say exactly how much).
At the start, the app got a number of lucky boosts. During a networking lunch in 2018, Matze struck up a conversation with Candace Owens, the conservative activist, who promptly began encouraging people to join Parler. By the following June, it had about 200,00 users, a figure that doubled almost overnight when hundreds of thousands of Saudi Arabian dissidents deserted Twitter for Parler, unhappy with what they saw as Twitter protecting the Saudi government. Media outlets including Reuters, Slate and The Daily Beast reported on the exodus, helping Parler keep growing.
Parler functions like a barebones Twitter with users (such as the Trumps and Giuliani) to follow and a feed to see their posts. True to Matze’s hands-off stance, the feed flows chronologically—unlike Twitter’s algorithm-based one. As for the exact rules, Matze is still figuring out which ones should apply, setting up an uncertain landscape that could be stampeded over if Trump carries through on his threat and switches to Parler. For instance, when asked if there ever might be an instance when the N-word would be appropriate, Matze has this answer: “It depends on the context. If they just said that word alone, I don't think we would touch it.” He thinks a couple minutes longer, then restates his opinion. “If somebody came on there and said the N-word to somebody, and they got very upset as a result of that, then it would get taken down.”
Matze is also just initially considering how Parler might make money. His plan: lure conservative influencers onto the platform, then help match them up with advertisers, taking a cut of the what the influencers charge the advertisers to shill their products. To encourage ads, he hopes to be able to offer up a legion of super engaged users—ones like himself. “I've been kind of on my own island on Parler for a while. I don't watch TV. I don't do anything. I get everything off Parler.”

Follow me on Twitter. Send me a secure tip. 

Abram Brown

Abram Brown is a senior editor at Forbes, where he covers social media,

There’s a new social media app trying to give Facebook and Twitter a run for their money -- without the censorship.

Instead of using fact-checkers or a “third party editorial board,” Parler moderates posts based on FCC guidelines and Supreme Court rulings, Parler CEO John Matze told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto on Friday.

“It’ll feel very similar to Twitter, which I’m sure many people are accustomed to,” Matze said. “However ... we take a really firm stance that we want to be unbiased.”
CONSERVATIVES USE TWITTER TO PUSH ALTERNATIVE PARLER APP AFTER TRUMP TWEET FLAGGED
If someone does post something inaccurate on Parler, Matze said the app would not fact-check it. Instead, other users would be able to comment.
“They can make any claim they’d like, but they’re going to be met with a lot of commenters, a lot of people who are going to disagree with them,” Matze said. “That’s how society works, right? If you make a claim, people are going to come and fact check you organically.”

“You don’t need an editorial board of experts to determine what’s true and what’s not,” he added. “The First Amendment was given to us so that we could all talk about issues, not have a single point of authority to determine what is correct and what’s not.”
WILL TRUMP SWITCH FROM TWITTER TO PARLER?
So far, Matze said Parler has gotten a lot of attention from conservatives -- because “they seem to be the ones that are most affected by Twitter censorship or Facebook censorship” -- but the website is for people from all places on the political spectrum.
“We’re a town square,” Matze said. “That’s how I view us. So everyone’s welcome, any kind of discussion.”
“We want people to actually have conversations again,” he added. “The country’s too partisan right now. And when you go on these sites, it feels like a battleground. And so the idea is that you’re going to get on Parler and have discussions with people.”
AG BARR ON TECH COMPANIES CENSORING VIEWPOINTS: ‘THERE’S SOMETHING VERY DISTURBING ABOUT WHAT’S GOING ON’
But it’s not just conservatives who are getting on Parler, Matze said.
“You’re going to see a lot of people on the other side of the aisle coming over very soon,” he said. “In fact, we’re seeing them in waves now. Not to the extent that they’re high-profile individuals, but you’re seeing a lot of people on the left who are actually curious.”
 “They will come in bigger numbers and we’re going to see some bigger names come over, too, when they don’t want to miss out on the conversation,” he added. “They can’t resist.”

However, the app is particularly important for conservatives to have a place where their voices can be heard, Matze said.
“Right now, conservatives need this kind of place, right?” he said. “This is something that they need in an election year, when they’re experiencing censorship or some kind of bias against them, whether it’s perceived or real … People want a place that they can feel like they’re appreciated and their voice matters and they can speak.”
Several Republican lawmakers have already joined the app including Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan.

COMMENTS:

Won’t take long for liberal progressives to migrate over to the new format and begin to contaminate it. It’s what they do for live. They are a cancer upon society.

 

Nothing free about it and these platforms are collective endeavors, designed to stifle opinion- every time.

 

 

PARLER, MINDS, & GAB = the future of social media ..... FREE SPEECH always prevails..... censorship kills!! just like communism!

PUNITIVE DAMAGES FOR VICTIMS OF EMBASSY BOMBINGS

18 May 2020 PUNITIVE DAMAGES FOR VICTIMS OF EMBASSY BOMBINGS from Supreme Court.

Unanimous ruling for plaintiffs on punitive damages for embassy bombings
It has been over two decades since al Qaeda operatives detonated bombs outside the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, killing over 200 people and injuring thousands more. The victims and their family members later filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington, D.C., seeking to hold Sudan responsible for its role in providing support for al Qaeda. The trial court awarded them billions of dollars, but a federal appeals court cut that award in half. It ruled that the plaintiffs could not recover punitive damages from Sudan because Congress did not authorize such damages until 10 years after the bombings. Today the Supreme Court unanimously (with Justice Brett Kavanaugh recused) threw out that ruling, setting the stage for billions of dollars in punitive damages to be reinstated.
Although foreign governments normally cannot be sued in U.S. courts, the plaintiffs brought their lawsuit under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which governs immunity for foreign countries and includes several exceptions to the general bar on lawsuits. One such exception is the “terrorism exception,” enacted in 1996, which allows foreign countries that have been identified as “state sponsors” of terrorism to be sued in U.S. courts for supporting terrorists.
Congress passed another amendment to the FSIA in 2008, to make clear that victims of terrorism can sue a state sponsor of terrorism in federal court and that they can seek punitive damages, which the FSIA otherwise prohibits. The dispute between the plaintiffs and Sudan hinges largely on the interpretation of this 2008 amendment.
In an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, the court began by acknowledging that, as a general rule, laws only apply prospectively. But even so, the court continued, Congress could not have been clearer in authorizing plaintiffs to seek punitive damages for conduct that occurred before it amended the FSIA in 2008. The court explained that Congress “expressly authorized punitive damages under a new cause of action” and then it “explicitly made that new cause of action available to remedy certain past acts of terrorism.” “Neither step,” the court concluded, “presents any ambiguity, nor is the” 2008 amendment “fairly susceptible to any competing interpretation.”
The court rejected Sudan’s suggestion that it should “create and apply a new rule requiring Congress to provide a super-clear statement” before allowing punitive damages for conduct that predates the law at issue. The court conceded that “applying new punishment to completed conduct can raise serious constitutional questions.” “But,” the court added, “if Congress clearly authorizes retroactive punitive damages in a manner the litigant thinks unconstitutional, the better course is for the litigant to challenge the law’s constitutionality,” rather than ask a court to ignore the plain text of the law. In any event, the court reasoned, when it creates rules for interpreting statutes, it tries to come up with workable ones, and “Sudan’s proposal promises more nearly the opposite: How much clearer-than-clear should we require Congress to be when authorizing the retroactive use of punitive damages?”
The court declined to weigh in on a separate question in the litigation – whether punitive damages are available for claims brought under state law by family members who are not U.S. citizens (and therefore could not rely on the new federal cause of action at the heart of this case). Because the plaintiffs did not raise this question in their petition for review, the court explained, “we think it best not to stray into new terrain on the basis of such a meager invitation and with such little assistance.” Having said that, however, the justices noted that the court of appeals had thrown out the punitive damages award to the foreign-national family members who brought their claims under state law “for ‘the same reason’” it relied on to rule against the plaintiffs proceeding under the new federal cause of action. Because “punitive damages are permissible for federal claims,” and “the reasons the court of appeals offered for its contrary decision were mistaken,” the Supreme Court instructed, “the court of appeals must also reconsider its decision concerning the availability of punitive damages for claims proceeding under state law.”
The case will now return to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit for further proceedings. But for the plaintiffs, today’s ruling was nonetheless a significant victory.

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Coronavirus-relief Payments Scams and Social Security Fraud

With coronavirus-relief payments circulating and many Americans in isolation amid the pandemic, scammers are seizing on the moment to exploit the fear and uncertainty the outbreak is creating.
Seniors are among the most vulnerable as scammers often target them because they may have more assets or regular income and because they’re often more trusting than other age groups, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau warns.

Among the myriad coronavirus-related schemes circulating: sending queries on stimulus checks in an attempt to pry financial information from vulnerable targets; offering unproven coronavirus test kits; and setting up bogus charities.

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The Federal Trade Commission received 45,623 coronavirus-related consumer and small-business complaints through May 14, representing reported fraud loss of more than $33.84 million, with a median individual loss of nearly $500.

Social Security Scams

The Social Security Administration recently warned about fraudulent letters threatening beneficiaries that their payments would be suspended or discontinued due to coronavirus-related office closures unless they called a phone number referenced in the letter. Scammers could then encourage those who called in to provide personal information or payment via retail gift cards, wire transfers, internet currency, or cash to maintain their benefits, the administration warned.
The agency said it won’t suspend or discontinue benefits due to the pandemic. Anyone who receives any communication about an alleged problem with their Social Security number, account, or payments that they believe to be suspicious should hang up or not respond, it advises.
Beneficiaries shouldn’t trust their caller ID as scam calls may show up on caller ID as the Social Security Administration, the FTC warns.
The agency says to report Social Security scams online.

Stimulus Scams

The Internal Revenue Service is warning of scams to intercept the economic-impact payments that have been mailed to taxpayers. Taxpayers will likely encounter official-looking web pages or social media-based communications or receive phishing email, text messages, or other communications that request sensitive personal information or payments in order to receive an economic-impact payment, the agency warns. Taxpayers shouldn’t follow any embedded links or open any attached files, it says.
Scammers may offer to help seniors get their stimulus check if they first verify their Social Security or bank routing number, says Colleen Tressler, a consumer education specialist with the FTC. They may also try to get you to sign your check over to them or they may send you a bogus check that requires you to verify it online or by calling a number.
No one from the IRS will reach out by telephone, email, or in person asking for information to complete economic-impact payments, the agency says.
The Better Business Bureau offers more information on coronavirus-related scams that target economic-impact checks on its website. The Treasury Department also has websites for reporting IRS-related coronavirus scams and scams specifically targeting economic-impact payments.
Imposters are also trying to take advantage of the growing anxieties around the pandemic to tap into seniors’ Medicare benefits. Common themes among Medicare scams are unsolicited phone calls to beneficiaries offering items and services related to coronavirus, such as Covid-19 testing and protective equipment, with no intent of delivery, according to a spokesman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The scams are designed to obtain Medicare beneficiary numbers to enable fraudsters to submit false claims for unrelated, unnecessary, or never-performed testing or services, as well as to steal the beneficiary’s identity.

 Beneficiaries should share their Medicare number only with their doctor, pharmacist, hospital, health insurer, or other trusted health-care provider. Those who receive a call from someone claiming to represent Medicare, asking for their Medicare number or other personal information should hang up, the spokesman says. If a beneficiary needs to be tested for Covid-19, he or she should call his or her health-care provider directly.
Beneficiaries should also monitor their quarterly Medicare summary notice for any services for which they were billed but which they didn’t receive or request.
Those who suspect Medicare fraud can report it by calling Medicare’s toll-free customer service center at 1-800-633-4227

The novel coronavirus has the world firmly in its grip. Images from northern Italy, Madrid, and New York City have shown that the threat of the virus should not be underestimated. Tens of thousands of people have died because of it. Most countries now face a dilemma: If drastic shutdowns continue, serious economic and social problems will arise, but going back to normal life is very dangerous and will risk tens of thousands of additional deaths. The final return to normalcy will be possible only if there is a vaccine or an effective medicine against Covid-19.
The European Union is on the front line of developing this vaccine. Some companies and laboratories that cooperate with experts from other parts of the world are already conducting human clinical trials. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen led a worldwide virtual summit on cooperation in this area.
While public and private stakeholders from all over the world—including Israel, Canada, Saudi Arabia, the United States.

The Wise Guys Good Fellas and The Democrats Solve Coronavirus

I wanna get to the bottom of the Corovirus thing. Call The Boys. All of 'em.
Call Fat Tuna Provenzano, Little Tony "The Lip" Fauci, Franky Five Angels, Salvatore "Sammy The BULL" Gravano, Berni "The Tractor" Provenzano, Lefty "Two Guns" Pacino, Dapper John "Teflon Don" Gotti, Lucky Luciano, Albert "Little Augie" Anastasia, Big Jim Colosimo, Sammy "The Plummer: Cavalcante, Salvatore Giuliano, Tommaso Buscetta, Don "The Leopard" Fabrizio, Don Calogero Vizzini, Giuseppe "The Prince" Tomasi, Paul Castellano, Tomas Billotti, Thomas Gambino, Gino Falcone, Giullio Andreotti, Luca Brotzsy, and all The Wise Guys, Good Fellas, Democrat Congressmen, Nancy Di Lorenzo Pelosi, Pencil Neck Schiff, Chuck "The Schmuck" Shummer, Fredo Cuomo, and Jerry  "the Penguin" Nadler.

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